Making of the Mako!!

I finally got around to making a model to use as the Mako from Stars & Lasers scenario pack No.11, the scenario called “Deep Black Sea…”

This sees a Heavy Cruiser, the UEF Magellanic Clouds come up against a predatory life form hiding within a cluster of asteroids!

This life form is the Mako, a similar size to the heavy cruiser and definitely intent on destroying the big ship.

Well I have now made a suitable model to use as this space creature.

I am no sculptor so I had to make this model another way, an easier way, so I raided my bits box and sorted out some creature pieces ( I think they were all from Tyranids )

First I found some tentacles, these were I think just about the right size for what I wanted, I could only find six so that would have to be the number of tentacles the creature would have.

Then I found a slightly curved shell-like piece with three spines along the back and a few barnacle looking marks along both sides, I then found some sort of spiked tail thing that looked suitably creepy to fit in with the look I wanted for the creature.

So I had some bits and now I needed to try and put them all together and the way I decided to do this was to make a basic blob of a body out of Milliput.

This I pushed up into the shell-like piece giving me the basic shape, I then pushed in the tail and smoothed this to the body.

Then working on the other end I made a simple mouth and then inserted the six tentacles… I used super glue to stick all these pieces into place as I find that the glue sets the Milliput around the plastic and gives a very hard join almost instantly… once these were in place I smoothed around each tentacle making them seem part of the creature.

When the Milliput was almost set I added a few small lines in the creature’s sides to try and show either some sort of sections of skin or to give the effect of the creature bending or moving… I did say that I am no sculptor! ☹️

I did eventually find some fangs or teeth which I added around the mouth.

Once all this was fully dry I started to paint the thing, first with a black primer and then… yeah and then what!!

I didn’t have a clue.

The picture I did for the scenario pack had sort of blue tentacles so I could have painted the Mako blue, but I thought that I would try something different… now I am not a great painter so dark colours are easier than bright colours ( that may sound odd but it’s true )

But I thought that I would try and start with black and work all the way to white, using purple and pink on the way!!

So that’s what I did, I used a dark purple just below the top line of the spine, this was Royal Purple and then from this I added a section of Warlord Purple finishing with a Pink and then a little White, this gave me a weird streak going from dark to light.

When this was all dry I did a dry brush mainly on the bottom sections with White and that was that, a strange pink creature!!

I doesn’t look too bad in natural light, the photos do make it seem a lot brighter and lighter than it really is, but I think it isn’t too bad and it will certainly be good enough as the space creature Mako.

Now I have my new Mako model I thought it was now ready for a battle…

So I set up my table for the “Deep black Sea…” scenario and got out a heavy cruiser to be the UEF Magellanic Clouds, I put out a few asteroids and was ready to play.

I rolled for the initial damage on the cruiser and was ready for turn one.

Mako streaked towards the heavy cruiser but couldn’t get close enough to bite the big ship so fired off its energy beam putting a hole straight through the cruiser!

The captain on board the cruiser ordered the pilot to keep the big ship as far away from the beast as he could and fired everything they could from a distance.

The Mako turned and raced toward the cruiser but again couldn’t get close enough so had to fire off its energy beam again putting a hole through the big ship.

The captain realised that he had to try and hurt the beast before one of those energy beams hits something important, so he orders the ship to turn again and hit the beast with all its lasers and again the Mako was hit but still it came on…

This time the Mako managed to close in on the cruiser wrapping its tentacles around the big ship and biting into its hull.

The Magellanic Clouds pulled slowly away from the creature and fired off all the lasers it could bring to bear, the Mako suffered agonizing pain as the lasers burned through its thick hide.

But it didn’t give up it turned again to go after the cruiser this time firing its energy beam, this time the Mako had managed to hit one of the cruisers primary systems causing explosions deep within the big ship.

The captain of the cruiser looked at all the damage reports flashing up on his consul and knew that his ship was in a bad way, so he ordered the pilot to again try and get away from the creature and fire all possible lasers.

The captain saw with pleasure that his ships lasers had really hurt the creature that time, he could see the huge creature shuddering from the hits.

But they hadn’t killed the creature and so it turned again and fired off its energy beam and it struck the cruiser in its engine section and explosions ripped through the ship as it tore its self apart…

The Mako moved slowly towards the destroyed cruiser and started to feed.

Well that went well for the Mako, although it was close at the end, it had lost all its armour and had taken over half damage, it had taken the critical hits “Stung!” and had “Nerve Cluster Shattered”, but it had two lucky “System Penetrated” rolls on the cruiser which took it out.

Great fun and nice quick game, the Mako got its revenge this time.

Please follow and like us:

4 Comments

    • Mac

      Hi Jack,
      Glad you enjoyed the battle report.

      I am pleased with how the scratch build turned out, it certainly makes the game look better having a “creature” attacking the ship.

      Mac

  1. Vic

    Hi Mac,

    Perhaps the UEF will now have to arm their ships with ‘Slug Pellet Guns’.

    Great Batrep & the Mako looks good in pink – for some reason the colour suits it

    • Mac

      Hi Vic,

      lol yeah that might be a good idea… note to self: work out stats for Slug Pellet Gun 😉

      To be fair the Mako has more purple on it than pink but I am still having trouble with photographing it, but I get what you mean about the colour suiting it… very odd!!

      Mac

Leave a Reply to Vic Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *